Alto Voices

I have mixed feelings related to raising my voice to sing. A lot of those feelings trace back to memories. One of my first memories of singing is with a friend from the neighborhood. We would make videos of having a good time and singing popular songs together in pure joy. Somewhere around middle school, that joy was lost. I remember my choral teacher, who could be cruel, especially at the end of the school day, once saying that I looked like a frog when I sang. It wasn't long after that comment that I quit choir. 

​I wish I could say that my singing experience in the church was also one full of joy—and there were undoubtedly beautiful moments. I remember my first choir director in the church when I was in Kindergarten, a woman who taught me songs of the faith that I still hold in my heart today—and I think of her fondly every time I sing. But I also had an experience with a praise team leader who was so focused on perfection that he would often speak from a place of harshness. 

I say all of this because it wasn't until I was in seminary that I became comfortable with singing again. Under our choral director's graceful and encouraging leadership, I found my voice as an alto - something I had never considered before. Now, almost a decade and a half after graduation, I still think about what it means to be an alto - defining it in my terms as adding layers of harmony and bringing out the best in others. 

But if offering harmony to the body as a whole, I also started to find my voice - unencumbered by the comments from my growing-up years that ushered forth a long season of silence. A particular moment in the seminary chapel stands out to me. A colleague and I were cleaning up after a worship service and started to sing across the room to each other - "I'm ready for a change." His tenor voice came from one corner of the room, melding with my alto voice positioned in the catty-corner. We could feel the music echoing through our bodies and spirits. I began to think that while it would be a beautiful song for him to sing in the empty chapel by himself, adding my voice, layers started to emerge that would be missing if I had not added my voice. 

If we believe that we are better together as the body of Christ, then we believe that we bring out harmony in each other. We believe that something would be missing if we did not each show up and add our voice to the good news of the Gospel. 

Of course, part of the struggle is that more people want to be the soprano in this metaphor than the alto. The soprano leads the melody and often lets their voice soar to heights within the musical range others could dream of reaching. Or they would rather be so far out of the choir - that they aren't contributing anything to the music because they are afraid they won't add anything. But being an alto offers us a different way - adding harmony. Add the support and structure for the whole piece to be heard differently. 

What shift in our world would lift the supporting voices? To celebrate them? To encourage them? And what new notes are just waiting to be heard when the whole body comes together in harmony?